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What you're describing is alienation. When your exploitation at work is normalised, but connecting to your community (if one even exists) is foreign, this is an inversion of the natural human condition. As capitalism advances towards ever more dehumanising technocratic stages, it brings about conditions which instill within us more anxiety, more dissociation.
Mind you, so much of what we call social life today is commodified and I can't fault you if it makes you feel cold and left out.
To all the other comments I would like to add that Marx was a philosopher that wrote papers, not a messiah that brought a new unmutable bible we all base our life on.
Like, Pasteur didn't know about viruses, that doesn't disqualify his works, but we shouldn't base our knowledge only on what he said. Also he was fr*nch so it's totally cancelled.
Marx Ableism Confirmed?!?! Left SHATTERED by new revelations
Edit: this is apparently my 666th comment
You should unironically look up about autism/aspergers - I was diagnosed with that and a LOT of what you said resonates with how I feel, so much so that it's almost like a stereotype. This isn't intended in mean spirits.
I feel like that should answer your question then? Just because something exists doesn't mean that Marx himself has to answer it. You now have another explanation for social effects. Unless I'm missing the point.
I don't think a theory about the economics of the world and labour exploitation will personally help with your difficulties understanding and interacting with human beings because your brain works differently from most of the world.
Yeah I mean Marxism wouldn't directly solve your social anxiety issues, however with more resources and more free time, you'd definitely have the means to work on it and get therapy (which would have more resources directed towards it)
There isn't the pretence of non-alienation when you're alone in your car or at work with other people who share the same situation. At a social gathering you are confronted with your alienation because there's other people who look like they're not.
At least how it is with me.
What is it about social gatherings that you struggle with? For me... I was really sociable when I was younger but as I got older - the only things people ever wanted to talk about were how good their job / car / family whatever was... things I couldn't relate to... and things that can definitely be traced back to the root problem of capitalism.
I'd like to think that when the profit motive is removed from our social interactions after abolishing capitalism that it will be more acceptable to be the quiet guy in the corner. That's just a hope though wish I had a better answer for you.
Okay I heavily relate to this. This was my problem when I was younger. I'm allistic (I think) so maybe this advice won't apply to you. But the issue for me was that my filter was overactive. My mind went blank in social situations because deep down I was terrified of saying the wrong thing and being rejected, so my brain just blocked me from saying anything at all. The truth is that people having conversations are not really saying things that are particularly clever or enlightening, and you can say those things too.
What I did - which is probably not the path for everyone - is exposure therapy. If you can do something without feeling afraid of it, the fear association in your brain weakens. I spent a lot of time getting drunk enough to kill my anxiety and then talking to everyone at parties. Eventually went to one where I didn't know anyone but the host, that shit was scary. After a while I realized there's nothing wrong with me and I'm actually a great conversationalist, as long as I get rid of the filter.
Also I read How to Win Friends and Influence People at some point before this and it was helpful. Concrete advice on how to make people feel at ease.
Also, to me it depends on the people who ard there in the party. Like bring me some comrades or at least some hippies and I would feel proud of my social skills, put me in a fucking party in my hometown and I will became a barnacle, at best following my social-skilled friends around and hating the experience. Unless I drink enough alcohol then I start to enjoy being surrounded of people I kinda hate.
Marx was really more of an economy/history/politics guy than a psychology/self-help guy so Idk if you're gonna find a take from him about feeling lonely at parties
Like with Marx and environmentalism, there isn't a formalised analysis so much as there is a blueprint because he lived before the field developed. Labour is a universal metabolic process, labour creates value, nature's value is that of the entire world and our survival so it's socially positive and countering an element of alienation, so I don't have any conflict between my Marxism and my modern environmentalism. Rev Left Radio did a great episode about alienation manifesting as drug addiction and more broadly our opioid epidemic because all of those forms of alienation deprive you from your basic needs. Marx predated the sciences that defined those needs and the conditions that alienate us from those needs in modern ways, but there's self-help value in understanding your material and social relationship to society/the planet and how that creates most of the things we're dealing with. It's that 19th century process of class consciousness mixed with the modern concept of self-actualisation.
You might just be an introvert. There will probably always be introverts in any kind of society. The stuff that Marx talks about is alienating on top of the normal alienation that you already have.
Under communism, you would be less alienated overall. You would still have the alienation of being an introvert, but you wouldn't have the extra alienation of working in a capitalist system.
Psychology is obviously a modern innovation, but of all the psychological frameworks to reify, the pop notion of introverts and extroverts seems especially particular to an era of neoliberal capitalism where strong social bonds have been totally dissolved, the majority of interpersonal interaction is highly mediated, and we're all expected to shape our circumstances based on our individual natural capacities.
How the fuck does he explain the phenomenon whereby I feel more alienated by dense & lively social gatherings ( and frankly always have)
If you haven't already, listen to and read Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle. He explores core Marxist ideas like alienation and commodity fetishism within the context of a modern hyper-reality where imagery replaces genuine experience. That merging of psychoanalysis and marketing in the 20th century enabled capitalism to do what Catholics did using grand cathedrals and illiterate peasants. Society evolves to mediate social relationships through that imagery and the commodity fetishism underlying it, without actually doing anything about the alienation you feel because it's a superstructural cancer. We see modern manifestations of this in things like social media, celebrity figures, fandoms, social scenes, subcultures, political parties, corporate families, non-democratic organisations, memes, political influence, and consumerism. Sure you can participate in any of those things but you'll still feel hollow because it's the system offering you a commodified version of Maslow's hierarchy of needs that only gives you the image of that need being met. Philosophically I can divide my life between pre- and post-Debord as much as I can pre- and post-Marx.
